Year 1

Welcome to Year 1!

Year one such an exciting part of your child's education as it comes with plenty of exciting learning opportunities and challenges. The children are encouraged to take ownership of their choices as well as becoming strong, independent learners. The progress that children can make during this year can really set them up for the rest of their time in education.

Our class teachers are:

 Key information about Year 1: (Meet the teacher link to follow) 

Your Teachers and Teaching Assistants

1B - Mr Heald, Mrs Salt

1G - Miss Carter, Miss Smith

1R- Mrs Nattrass/Mrs Dagnall, Mrs Kirk

You may also have the chance to learn with our 1:1 Support Assistants:

Need to get in touch?

The primary from of communication in year 1 is through Class Dojo messenger.

However, you can also contact your child's teacher through email:

Mr J Heald -  jheald@williamshrewsbury.com

Miss Carter - jcarter@williamshrewsbury.com

Mrs Nattrass- lnattrass@williamshrewsbury.com

Mrs Dagnall - cdagnall@williamshrewsbury.com

We will endeavour to respond to your messages as soon as we possibly can.

We appreciate your patience in allowing us time to do this.

Links to support learning at home:

Our top tips for supporting your child's learning at home are the following:

• Read with your child as often as you can at home. 
  • Build this in to your nightly routine.
  • Encourage a love of books by reading to them as well as them reading to you.
• Work on your child's 'Target Rockets' with them.
  • We will send home target sounds, tricky words, spellings and formations each half term.
  • We recommend spending only a couple of minutes each day on these. Pick 2/3 to learn at one time and revisit ones they already know too.
• Learn numbers up to 100.
  • Become familiar with a 100 square, build numbers using tens and ones, find one more and one less than a number and order numbers too.
• Learn number bonds to 10.
  • Help your child to quickly recall the pairs of numbers that add up to 10.
• Encourage wider learning about our world.
  • Our newsletter suggests ways in which you can extend your child's learning. This can be through suggested games, trips or activities.
• Keep your child active.
  • Trips to the park, garden games, immersing yourself in your child's play (playing with them in whatever they're doing) and going for family walks are good ways to improve fitness and well-being.
  • Play such as trains, cars, Lego, dolls, colouring etc are essential in developing your child. Encourage this type of play as often as you can.

Class texts:

Throughout school, we follow a book-based curriculum. The key texts that the children will focus on in Year 1 are:

• The Jolly Postman by Janet and Allan Alberg
• How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers
• George And The Dragon by Christopher Wormell
• The Koala Who Could by Rachel Bright
• Wind in the Willows
• Dogger by Shirley Hughes.

Autumn 1 - The Jolly Postman: Throughout this term we will be using traditional fairy tales to explore the Year 1 curriculum in a fun and creative way.

Autumn 2 - How to Catch a Star: The second part of our Autumn term begins by celebrating the festival of light where we look at various cultures and religious festivals from around the world. We end our term with a festive bang where the children will have a Christmas craft week.

Spring 1 - George And The Dragon: Throughout this topic children will be learning all about castles and using this knowledge to create an in-depth non-fiction fact file. They will also be exploring lots of historical elements from the Year 1 curriculum. We even visit Tamworth castle and become knights for the day!

Spring 2 - The Koala Who Could: This half term we grab our passports and set off on an adventure to Australia! Along the way we meet some very interesting people and look closely at our wonderful world!

Summer 1 - Wind in the Willows: In this term the children will look at a range of objectives including the different types of trees, life cycles and the classification of animals. At the end of this term we spend a day with nature where we pack up and head for the greenery of Rosliston Forestry Centre! The children are able to use the knowledge which they have gained in lessons to explore and identify a variety of trees found around the park and dazzle the park keepers with their fantastic understanding!

Summer 2 - Dogger: During our final half term we will be learning all about toys. The children will have an opportunity to find out about toys through history.

Useful Information:

What will my child learn in Year 1 - Guide for ParentsParent Information PowerPoint

Class Dojo and Communication
We are excited to give you a glimpse into the Year 1 classrooms via our class dojo pages. By now we hope that all parents are connected have been able to access the class story feature. This will help you keep up to date with the latest happenings throughout the day. The event feature helps to display important upcoming events and gives you a friendly reminder when the event is due to take place. If you have any questions or queries or would like to notify your class teacher, please use the messaging app to correspond.  We will try our best to reply to these messages as soon as possible. 

Personal Belongings:
It has been wonderful to see the children attending school thus far with excellent uniform standards. We appreciate that many parents have taken the time to purchase new uniform and belongings for school. We politely ask that all uniform is clearly labelled with first names and last initials. We kindly ask that the children do not attend school with their own pencil cases or learning tools such as whiteboard markers. This will be reviewed later in the year and updates will be given via our parent texting system or Dojo. Thank you for your understanding.

Our Curriculum 

Physical Education (PE):
In Year 1 our PE days are on Monday and Thursday. On these days please ensure that your child has removed any earrings and long hair is tied back. This year, we will be alternating PE sessions so that one session is outdoors and one is indoors each week. This means the children will be required to bring both an indoor and an outdoor PE kit.

Maths:

In Year 1 the children build upon their learning from Reception and develop their understanding of core number. This year, we learn a range of topics from place value, addition and subtraction, multiplication, money, shape, time and basic fractions! During Autumn term you can help your child at home by recognising numbers up to 20 and practicing their formation. 

Reading:
Now your child is in Year 1, they will be encouraged to independently change and choose their reading books - although they will be supported with this initially. We do keep a record of how often the books are being changed but please email your class teacher if this is not happening as regularly as you need.

We recommend that children change their reading books twice a week and encourage them to read their book more than once to build their confidence and familiarity of the text.

Please record any comments on 'Boom Readers', our new online reading record app. We will keep a count of how many books the children have read throughout the year and will award certificates for different milestones.

Year 1 and 2 Common Exception Words

Phonics:
In Year 1, we have a big focus on phonics as at the end of the year they will be sitting the national Phonics Screening Check. To help aid your child with this please refer to their phonics sounds in their reading diary and practise reading and spelling words with these sounds in. Also why not try out the fun games on Phonics Play to keep their learning fun and interactive, please see below for the link. We will be holding a phonics workshop and family learning sessions during the year.
Phonics sound mat

Useful Websites

You will find the following websites useful in supporting your child's learning at home. 

• Oxford Reading Buddy 

Follow this link to access the Oxford Reading Buddy website where you can use your own personal login to read lots of extra books! Why not try one of the reading quizzes afterwards?

• Phonics Play 

Follow this link to access the main website that we use to support phonics and spelling in school. Username: Williams Password: tigger

• TopMarks  

Maths Follow this link for a range of Maths games for mental calculations, ordering numbers and times tables.